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The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par